While
some of these documents may demonstrate how much work lies ahead in
terms of securing international peace and justice, their release changed
the world for the better.
Private Manning’s actions showed people everywhere how citizens can use
the Internet to hold their governments accountable.

In Chelsea’s request for pardon from President Obama, she wrote:

“As the late Howard Zinn once said, ‘There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.’

Private Manning’s brave actions have set an example for us all.

Here are three important ways you can support Chelsea on her birthday:

Please note that regular letter paper must be used, as cardstock will be turned away.
However, you can easily print out your own card by searching for “free birthday templates” online.

3. Hold a
party with friends and neighbors to raise money for Chelsea’s legal
defense.
Whether a dinner party, cocktail party or concert, bringing people
together for an evening of education and socializing is a great way to
kindle some social consciousness and holiday spirit.
On each person's way out the door, you can ask them to add a personal
message on a joint birthday letter to Chelsea.
If you want your party to be public, send information about your event
to owen@bradleymanning.org

Help us continue to cover 100% of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.

1) N.S.A. May Have Hit Internet Companies at a Weak Spot
By
NICOLE PERLROTH and JOHN MARKOFF
November 25, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/technology/a-peephole-for-the-nsa.html?hp

SAN FRANCISCO — The recent revelation that the National Security Agency
was able to eavesdrop on the communications of Google and Yahoo users
without breaking into either companies’ data centers sounded like
something pulled from a Robert Ludlum spy thriller.

How on earth, the companies asked, did the N.S.A. get their data without them knowing about it?

The most likely answer is a modern spin on a century-old eavesdropping tradition.

People knowledgeable about Google and Yahoo’s infrastructure say they
believe that government spies bypassed the big Internet companies and
hit them at a weak spot — the fiber-optic cables that connect data
centers around the world that are owned by companies like Verizon
Communications, the BT Group, the Vodafone Group and Level 3
Communications. In particular, fingers have been pointed at Level 3, the
world’s largest so-called Internet backbone provider, whose cables are
used by Google and Yahoo.

The Internet companies’ data centers
are locked down with full-time security and state-of-the-art
surveillance, including heat sensors and iris scanners. But between the
data centers — on Level 3’s fiber-optic cables that connected those
massive computer farms — information was unencrypted and an easier
target for government intercept efforts, according to three people with
knowledge of Google’s and Yahoo’s systems who spoke on the condition of
anonymity.

It is impossible to say for certain how the N.S.A.
managed to get Google and Yahoo’s data without the companies’ knowledge.
But both companies, in response to concerns over those vulnerabilities,
recently said they were now encrypting data that runs on the cables
between their data centers. Microsoft is considering a similar move.

“Everyone was so focused on the N.S.A. secretly getting access to the
front door that there was an assumption they weren’t going behind the
companies’ backs and tapping data through the back door, too,” said
Kevin Werbach, an associate professor at the Wharton School.

Data transmission lines have a long history of being tapped.

As far back as the days of the telegraph, spy agencies have located
their operations in proximity to communications companies. Indeed,
before the advent of the Internet, the N.S.A. and its predecessors for
decades operated listening posts next to the long-distance lines of
phone companies to monitor all international voice traffic.

In the 1990s, the emergence of the Internet both complicated the task
of the intelligence agencies and presented powerful new spying
opportunities based on the ability to process vast amounts of computer
data.

In 2002, John M. Poindexter, former national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan, proposed the Total Information Awareness plan,
an effort to scan the world’s electronic information — including phone
calls, emails and financial and travel records. That effort was scrapped
in 2003 after a public outcry over potential privacy violations.

The technologies Mr. Poindexter proposed are similar to what became
reality years later in N.S.A. surveillance programs like Prism and Bullrun.

The Internet effectively mingled domestic and international
communications, erasing the bright line that had been erected to protect
against domestic surveillance. Although the Internet is designed to be a
highly decentralized system, in practice a small group of backbone
providers carry almost all of the network’s data.

The
consequences of the centralization and its value for surveillance was
revealed in 2006 by Mark Klein, an AT&T technician who described an
N.S.A. listening post inside a room at an AT&T switching facility.

The agency was capturing a copy of all the data passing over the
telecommunications links and then filtering it in AT&T facilities
that housed systems that were able to filter data packets at high speed.

Documents taken by Edward J. Snowden and reported by The Washington Post
indicate that, seven years after Mr. Klein first described the N.S.A.’s
surveillance technologies, they have been refined and modernized.

“From Echelon to Total Information Awareness to Prism, all these
programs have gone under different names, but in essence do the same
thing,” said Chip Pitts, a law lecturer at Stanford University School of
Law.

Based in the Denver suburbs, Level 3 is not a household
name like Verizon or AT&T, but in terms of its ability to carry
traffic, it is bigger than the other two carriers combined. Its
networking equipment is found in 200 data centers in the United States,
more than 100 centers in Europe and 14 in Latin America.

Level 3
did not directly respond to an inquiry about whether it had given the
N.S.A., or the agency’s foreign intelligence partners, access to Google
and Yahoo’s data. In a statement, Level 3 said: “It is our policy and
our practice to comply with laws in every country where we operate, and
to provide government agencies access to customer data only when we are
compelled to do so by the laws in the country where the data is
located.”

Also, in a financial filing, Level 3 noted that, “We
are party to an agreement with the U.S. Departments of Homeland
Security, Justice and Defense addressing the U.S. government’s national
security and law enforcement concerns. This agreement imposes
significant requirements on us related to information storage and
management; traffic management; physical, logical and network security
arrangements; personnel screening and training; and other matters.”

Security experts say that regardless of whether Level 3’s participation
is voluntary or not, recent N.S.A. disclosures make clear that even
when Internet giants like Google and Yahoo do not hand over data, the
N.S.A. and its intelligence partners can simply gather their data
downstream.

That much was true last summer when United States
authorities first began tracking Mr. Snowden’s movements after he left
Hawaii for Hong Kong with thousands of classified documents. In May,
authorities contacted Ladar Levison, who ran Lavabit, Mr. Snowden’s
email provider, to install a tap on Mr. Snowden’s email account. When
Mr. Levison did not move quickly enough to facilitate the tap on
Lavabit’s network, the Federal Bureau of Investigation did so without him.

Mr. Levison said it was unclear how that tap was installed, whether
through Level 3, which sold bandwidth to Lavabit, or at the Dallas
facility where his servers and networking equipment are stored. When Mr.
Levison asked the facility’s manager about the tap, he was told the
manager could not speak with him. A spokesman for TierPoint, which owns
the Dallas facility, did not return a call seeking a comment.

Mr. Pitts said that while working as the chief legal officer at Nokia in
the 1990s, he successfully fended off an effort by intelligence
agencies to get backdoor access into Nokia’s computer networking
equipment.

Nearly 20 years later, Verizon has said that it and
other carriers are forced to comply with government requests in every
country in which they operate, and are limited in what they can say
about their arrangements. “At the end of the day, if the Justice
Department shows up at your door, you have to comply,” Lowell C. McAdam,
Verizon’s chief executive, said in an interview in September. “We have
gag orders on what we can say and can’t defend ourselves, but we were
told they do this with every carrier.”

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2) As Homeless Line Up for Food, Los Angeles Weighs Restrictions
By
ADAM NAGOURNEY

LOS ANGELES — They began showing up at dusk last week, wandering the
streets, slumped in wheelchairs and sitting on sidewalks, paper plates
perched on their knees. By 6:30 p.m., more than 100 homeless people had
lined up at a barren corner in Hollywood, drawn by free meals handed out
from the back of a truck every night by volunteers.

But these days, 27 years after the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition
began feeding people in a county that has one of the worst homeless
problems in the nation, the charity is under fire, a flashpoint in the
national debate over the homeless and the programs that serve them.

Facing an uproar from homeowners, two members of the Los Angeles City
Council have called for the city to follow the lead of dozens of other
communities and ban the feeding of homeless people in public spaces.

“If you give out free food on the street with no other services to deal
with the collateral damage, you get hundreds of people beginning to
squat,” said Alexander Polinsky, an actor who lives two blocks from the
bread line. “They are living in my bushes and they are living in my next
door neighbor’s crawl spaces. We have a neighborhood which now seems
like a mental ward.”

Should Los Angeles enact such an
ordinance, it would join a roster of more than 30 cities, including
Philadelphia, Raleigh, N.C., Seattle and Orlando, Fla., that have
adopted or debated some form of legislation intended to restrict the
public feeding of the homeless, according to the National Coalition of the Homeless.

“Dozens of cities in recent years,” said Jerry Jones, the coalition’s
executive director. “It’s a common but misguided tactic to drive
homeless people out of downtown areas.”

“This is an attempt to make difficult problems disappear,” he said, adding, “It’s both callous and ineffective.”

The notion that Los Angeles might join this roster is striking given
the breadth of the problem here. Encampments of homeless can be found
from downtown to West Hollywood, from the streets of Brentwood to the
beaches of Venice. The situation that has stirred no small amount of
frustration and embarrassment among civic leaders, now amplified by
fears of the hungry and mostly homeless people, who have come to count
on these meals.

“They are helping human beings,” said Debra
Morris, seated in a wheelchair as she ate the evening’s offering of
pasta with tomato sauce. “I can barely pay my own rent.”

There are now about 53,800 homeless people in Los Angeles County, according to the 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report
released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development last week, a
27 percent increase over last year. Only New York had a higher homeless
population.

The problem is particularly severe here because of
the temperate climate that makes it easier to live outdoors, cuts in
federal spending on the homeless, and a court-ordered effort by
California to shrink its prison population, said Mike Arnold, the
executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, an
agency created by the city and county in 1993.

All told, about $82 million in government funds is spent each year on helping homeless here, Mr. Arnold said.

Tom LaBonge,
one of the two City Council members who introduced the resolution (the
other, also a Democrat, was Mitch O’Farrell), said food lines should be
moved indoors, out of consideration to the homeless and neighborhoods.
“There are well-intentioned people on both sides,” Mr. LaBonge said.

But, he added: “This has overwhelmed what is a residential
neighborhood. When dinner is served, everybody comes and it’s kind of a
free-for-all.”

Ted Landreth, the founder of the food coalition,
said his group had fought back community opposition before — it moved
to this corner after being ordered out of Plummer Park in West Hollywood in 1990 because of similar complaints — and would do so again.

“The people who want to get rid of us see dollar signs, property values, ahead of pretty much everything else,” he said.

”We have stood our ground,” he added. “We are not breaking any law.”

Communities that have sought to implement feeding restriction laws have
faced strong resistance. In Philadelphia, advocates for the homeless
won an injunction in federal court blocking a law there that would have
banned food lines in public parks. Even before the court action,
religious groups had moved in and began setting up indoor food lines.

In many ways the agonies of the national battle over dealing with
homelessness are etched into this four-block-square section of
Hollywood, where industrial buildings, including the Cemex cement
factory, film production facilities and the stately former headquarters
of Howard Hughes’s enterprises, sit two blocks up North Sycamore Avenue
away from a middle-class neighborhood of Spanish Mission homes.
Construction in the area is bustling, reflecting the gentrification that
is taking place across this city.

The coalition’s truck, a
Grumman Kurbmaster, arrives every night at 6:15, drawing as many as 200
people from across the region.

The other night, men and women
lined up for firsts and, if desired, seconds. Some were quiet and
grateful, and a few were loud and agitated. “You all right?” Mr.
Landreth asked one man who was shouting to himself.

Just up the
street, 75 people filled a living room, anxiously exchanging stories
about what many described as a neighborhood under siege, and demanding
help from local officials.

“You guys have had your fill here —
we know that,” Officer Dave Cordova of the Los Angeles Police Department
told them. “And the food coalition doesn’t help. Where do all these
guys go after they get something to eat?”

Peter Nichols, the founder of the Melrose Action Neighborhood Watch,
which helped organize the meeting, said there has been a steady
increase in complaints about petty crime, loitering, public defecation
and people sleeping on sidewalks.

“While it sounds good in
concept — I’m going to pull up to a curb, I’m going to feed people, I’m
going to clean up and I’m going to leave — well, there are not
restrooms,” he said. “Can these people get a place to sleep? To clean
up? We want there to be after-care provided every day they do the
program. But they don’t and they can’t.”

What Mr. Landreth
described as the most serious threat in its existence — a powerful
combination of opposition from homeowners, businesses and city officials
— is stirring deep concern among the people who come here to eat most
nights.

“I know because of the long lines, a lot of times we
have trouble and confusion,” said Emerson Tenner, 46, as he waited for a
meal. “But there are people here who really need this. A few people act
a little crazy. Don’t mess it up for everyone else.”

Aaron
Lewis, who said he makes his home on the sidewalk by a 7-Eleven on
Sunset Boulevard, chalked up opposition to what he described as rising
callousness to people in need.

“That’s how it is everywhere,” Mr. Lewis said. “People here — it’s their only way to eat. The community doesn’t help us eat.”

Matt Hamilton contributed reporting.

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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

3) Egypt’s Government Struggles to Gain Footing as Dissent Grows
By
KAREEM FAHIM

CAIRO — When the new military-backed Egyptian government lifted a nationwide state of emergency
more than 10 days ago, it seemed to be proclaiming a momentary victory
in the battle with its principal foe, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose
regular protests had begun to wither.

But the government’s
problems hardly abated. In brazen and occasionally spectacular attacks,
militants have stepped up a campaign of assassinations and bombings
aimed at the security services.

Non-Islamist critics have
accused the government of incompetence or growing authoritarianism,
potentially broadening the opposition beyond supporters of Mohamed
Morsi, the deposed Islamist president. At the same time, unrest has
begun to surface in different places, lately sweeping up Islamist
students on university campuses.

And notably, small cracks have
begun to appear in the coalition that supported the ouster of Mr. Morsi
as the government has faced anger from recent allies and rare criticism
in the once-fawning local news media. It has become harder for
officials to blame the Brotherhood for all the nation’s woes, nearly
five months after it was swept from power and then battered by a
relentless campaign of state repression. But rather than trying to move
beyond the conflict, the government still seems largely shaped by it.

Officials have started to dismiss critics using the language of
previous autocratic rulers, blaming a shadowy fifth column or foreign
meddling. And in response to dissent, they have drafted repressive new
laws to replace the state of emergency, including a law issued on Sunday
that bans protests by more than 10 people without the government’s
approval.

“They have kept alive the idea of ‘enemies of the
nation’ and the war on terror — the only glue keeping the bits and
pieces together,” said Rabab el-Mahdi, a political science professor at
the American University of Cairo, speaking of the interim government.
“For any ruling alliance to be stable, it cannot depend on force or
coercion. They lack any kind of ideological shield, except being against
the Brotherhood.”

“They are not delivering,” Ms. Mahdi added, “and they will keep facing the dissent.”

Some of the criticism of the government seems to be a result of
competing agendas within state institutions, rather than from
spontaneous outrage. Analysts say that calls for an even harsher
crackdown on the Islamists, for example, could emanate from security
agencies that the government, like its predecessors, has made no attempt
to reform.

To solidify its legitimacy, the government has
started an aggressive campaign to promote a referendum on a draft
constitution, the first milestone in a so-called road map that the
military has promised will restore democracy to Egypt. Officials hope a
decisive approval of the constitution would undercut the Muslim
Brotherhood’s claim that it alone commands popular support, after
prevailing in successive elections over the last three years.

The vote is scheduled for January. The outcome has the potential to
change the nature of the conflict between the state and the Brotherhood,
according to Michael Wahid Hanna, a scholar at the Century Foundation in New York who studies Egypt.

“Does it pass by more than the Morsi constitution?” he asked, referring
to the 2012 Constitution that was approved by 63 percent of voters,
despite vigorous opposition of the drafting process and the charter from
non-Islamists.

If the referendum were to be approved by a wide
margin, the Brotherhood, which has resisted the idea of negotiation on
the military’s terms, could be “well and truly isolated, and they might
have to reconsider,” Mr. Hanna said.

These days, though, the
state’s conflict with the Brotherhood is just one of its many struggles.
In an unnerving episode for the government, leftists and other
activists who were in the forefront of the 2011 revolt against former
President Hosni Mubarak demonstrated last week against both the
Brotherhood and the military in Tahrir Square in Cairo. The activists
tore down the base of a planned memorial to protesters who were killed
during the revolt, and two demonstrators were killed in clashes with the
police.

Even some commentators who had enthusiastically backed
the military’s ouster of Mr. Morsi have bluntly criticized the
government recently.

“We were silent and put our tongues in our
mouths,” Mamdouh Hamza, a strident critic of the Islamists, said during
a television interview. “We didn’t want to serve the interests of the
Brothers.”

Mr. Hamza, criticizing the government’s response
after a train crash that killed 27 people, accused the cabinet of being
“against the goals of the revolution.”

Another commentator,
Khaled Abu Bakr, questioned the credentials of the interim prime
minister, Hazem el-Beblawi, saying he “belonged in a university” rather
than at the head of the cabinet. “My satisfaction with the 30th of June
doesn’t mean my satisfaction with everything that followed,” he added,
referring to the date of protests against Mr. Morsi before the military
takeover. “Don’t bring me a cabinet chairman like that in a phase like
this.”

The new law regulating protest demonstrations has set
off the loudest complaints. The final draft calls for jail time or heavy
fines for exactly the kind of public demonstrations that brought down
Mr. Mubarak and propelled the current government to power.

Protesters are required to notify the authorities three days before any
demonstration, and they are forbidden to gather at places of worship.
Organizers across the political spectrum have customarily used Friday
Prayer at mosques as starting points for marches. The law also permits
security agencies to prohibit public gatherings, demonstrations or
meetings — including political campaign events — if they are deemed a
threat to public order. Citizens have the right to appeal to a court.

In a radio interview on Monday, Mr. Beblawi said the law merely
regulated protests. Asked about those who failed to seek permission —
like Mr. Morsi’s supporters, who do not recognize the government — Mr.
Beblawi compared them to “a man who kills or another who deals drugs.”

“If arrested, they will be put to trial and punished,” he said.

Karim Medhat Ennarah, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for
Personal Rights, called the law “unrealistic,” for seeking to regulate
the near-daily marches that occur across the country, by Islamists or
workers or anyone else with a complaint.

“The current political
institutions are not able to assimilate the newly politicized groups,
and that hasn’t changed in three years,” he said. “The only response is
to try and control them.”

Emissions of the greenhouse gas methane due to human activity were
roughly 1.5 times greater in the United States in the middle of the last
decade than prevailing estimates, according to a new analysis by 15
climate scientists published Monday in The Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.

The analysis
also said that methane discharges in Texas and Oklahoma, where oil and
gas production was concentrated at the time, were 2.7 times greater than
conventional estimates. Emissions from oil and gas activity alone could
be five times greater than the prevailing estimate, the report said.

The study relies on nearly 12,700 measurements of atmospheric methane
in 2007 and 2008. Its conclusions are sharply at odds with the two most
comprehensive estimates of methane emissions, by the Environmental
Protection Agency and an alliance of the Netherlands and the European
Commission.

The E.P.A. has stated that all emissions of
methane, from both man-made and natural sources, have been slowly but
steadily declining since the mid-1990s. In April, the agency reduced its
estimate of methane discharges from 1990 through 2010 by 8 to 12
percent, largely citing sharp decreases in discharges from gas
production and transmission, landfills and coal mines.

The new
analysis calls that reduction into question, saying that two sources of
methane emissions in particular — from oil and gas production and from
cattle and other livestock — appear to have been markedly larger than
the E.P.A. estimated during 2007 and 2008.

One of the study’s
principal authors, Scot M. Miller of Harvard University’s department of
earth and planetary sciences, said its higher estimates underscore
methane’s significant contribution to rising temperatures.

“These are pretty substantial numbers we’re dealing with, and an
important part of greenhouse gas emissions,” he said on Monday. “Our
study shows that there could be large greenhouse gas emissions in places
in the country where we may not necessarily have accounted for them.”

Methane made up only about 9 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in
2011, the E.P.A. said; carbon dioxide is easily the most prevalent gas.
But methane is much more potent. Even though it rapidly breaks down in
the atmosphere, its contribution to global warming is 21 times greater
than carbon dioxide’s over a 100-year period.

The E.P.A. and Europe’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research
largely agree on how much methane is discharged annually in the United
States. At the most basic level, both arrive at estimates by assigning
an average discharge to each category of methane emission, such as
landfills, and multiplying the average by the number of sources in each
category.

The latest analysis differs from those estimates
because it relies on actual measurement of methane concentrations.
Nearly 5,000 air samples were collected from 10 huge communications
towers spread across the country — some on mountaintops, others more
than 1,000 feet high — and some 7,700 more from an aircraft monitoring
program, both programs run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration and the Department of Energy.

The data did not
directly identify the sources of methane discharges. But the researchers
were able to infer those sources through a range of techniques. In
areas associated with oil and gas production, for example, the amount of
airborne methane could be correlated with measurements of propane,
another gas that serves as a sort of marker for oil and gas activity.

The study concluded that livestock produced roughly twice as much
methane during the reporting period as the European database estimated.
Most striking, the analysis reported that oil and gas operations in a
north-south swath of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas may have produced five
times more methane — and, combining all sources of discharge, the three
states may have been responsible for a quarter of all man-made methane
discharges in the United States.

Mr. Miller cautioned that both
estimates were subject to large margins of uncertainty; the methane
from oil and gas activity could be as small as 2.3 times the European
estimates, or as great as 7.5 times. The reason, he said, is that the
potential for inaccuracy rises as the area being surveyed or the
category of emissions grows smaller.

The same caveat applies to
the few regions where the study found that methane discharges were
smaller than European estimates: the Appalachian coal belt, southern
Illinois and western Kentucky, and New York City, for example. Some of
those spots were also in areas where monitoring of airborne methane was
infrequent or absent.

That said, the study’s overall conclusion
that methane emissions were 1.5 times E.P.A.’s latest estimates is
statistically accurate to within about 5 percent, Mr. Miller said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

The Rev. T. J. Jemison, a civil rights pioneer who organized a 1953 bus
boycott in Baton Rouge, La., that foreshadowed the one set off by Rosa Parks
in Montgomery, Ala., and who went on to lead the nation’s largest black
Baptist organization into liberal political activism, died on Nov. 15
in Baton Rouge. He was 95.

His son, Theodore J. Jemison Jr., confirmed the death.

Mr. Jemison was one of a handful of black clergymen recognized as a
leader of the first generation of the civil rights movement. He was a
founding member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, along
with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Ralph Abernathy and the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth.

As president of the National Baptist Convention U.S.A.
from 1982 to 1994, Mr. Jemison ushered into being the World Baptist
Center in Nashville, the first national headquarters of a predominantly
black church in the United States. But in 1991 he lost much of his
church-based support by speaking out in defense of the boxer Mike Tyson
after he was charged with rape.

Mr. Jemison was known for his
political skills in the early days of the civil rights struggle,
displaying a mix of charm and toughness that served him well in leading
what historians say was apparently the movement’s first large-scale bus
boycott.

Appointed pastor of the Mount Zion First Baptist
Church in Baton Rouge in 1949, Mr. Jemison led voter registration
efforts, beginning in 1950, that resulted in improved municipal services
and the construction of a dozen new schools for black citizens.

In 1953 he persuaded the Baton Rouge City Council to abolish a public
transportation rule barring blacks from sitting in the first 10 rows of
public buses. When bus drivers went on strike to protest the change, Mr.
Jemison led an eight-day boycott, starting on June 20.

Blacks
accounted for 80 percent of the city’s bus ridership, and they were
tired of having to stand up while some or even all of the first 10 rows
went empty, Mr. Jemison said. “We were not necessarily interested at
that time in ending segregation,” he said in an interview in 1993. “We
were after seats.”

The dispute ended in a compromise: Only the first two rows would be reserved for whites.

Dr. King, the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in
Montgomery, contacted Mr. Jemison in late 1954 for advice on managing a
citywide bus boycott.

“Knowing that Jemison and his associates
had set up an effective private car pool, I put in a long-distance
telephone call to ask him for suggestions for a similar pool in
Montgomery,” Dr. King wrote in a 1958 memoir, “Stride Toward Freedom.”
Mr. Jemison’s tutorial was “invaluable” in winning that fight, Dr. King
added.

The yearlong Montgomery bus boycott, set off by Ms.
Parks’s refusal to give up her seat to a white person, was the beginning
of the end of separate-but-equal accommodations in the South.

The National Baptist Convention, with 26,000 member congregations and
seven million congregants, had been a nonpolitical organization when Mr.
Jemison was elected president in 1982 (his father, the Rev. David
Jemison, had been president from 1940 to 1953). But Mr. Jemison quickly
began staking out firm, liberal positions on race-related issues,
accusing President Ronald Reagan of giving “respectability to racism,”
supporting the presidential candidacies of the Rev. Jesse Jackson in
1984 and 1988 and, in 1991, opposing the Persian Gulf war, which he
called “a fight over oil.”

When Desiree Washington, an
18-year-old Miss Black America contestant, accused Mr. Tyson of rape in
1991, Mr. Jemison described him as a victim of racial stereotyping,
prompting other church leaders and women’s groups to criticize his
support as insensitive to Ms. Washington. They also accused of him of
being prejudiced by Mr. Tyson’s offer (never received) of $5 million
toward the building of the convention’s $12 million headquarters in
Nashville.

Mr. Tyson was convicted and served three years of a six-year prison sentence.

Mr. Jemison was later indicted, though never tried, on federal perjury
charges in connection with an alleged attempt to bribe Ms. Washington to
drop the charges. After stepping down as president of the Baptist
convention in 1994, he told interviewers that he was especially proud of
his role in building the group’s new headquarters, his signature
achievement, because it fulfilled a dream of his father’s.

Theodore Judson Jemison was born on Aug. 1, 1918, in Selma, Ala., the
youngest of the six children of Henrietta and David Jemison. His father
was also the pastor of Selma’s Tabernacle Baptist Church. The younger
Mr. Jemison attended segregated public schools and graduated from the
historically black Alabama State University in Montgomery before earning
a divinity degree at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Va.

He remained the pastor of the Mount Zion First Baptist Church in Baton Rouge for 54 years. He retired in 2003.

Besides his son, Mr. Jemison is survived by two daughters, Dianne
Jemison Pollard and Betty Jane Wagner, and nine grandchildren. His wife,
Celestine Catlett Jemison, died in 2006.

Anthea Butler, an
associate professor of religion and African studies at the University of
Pennsylvania, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Jemison’s
contributions to the civil rights cause were never widely known
primarily as a result of a decision he made in 1961 as secretary of the
Baptist convention.

That year, the group’s president, the Rev.
Joseph H. Jackson, and Dr. King were bitterly divided over the
organization’s role in the civil rights struggle; Mr. Jackson opposed
involving the church in it, and Mr. Jemison sided with him.

His
decision secured his place in the church hierarchy — he remained
secretary for the next two decades — but forced him to reduce his role
in the movement, though he said he disagreed with Mr. Jackson’s views
and would eventually change the organization’s policies after succeeding
Mr. Jackson in 1982.

“It’s felt that he had a sense of loyalty
to the organization because of his father’s association with it,”
Professor Butler said.

A
decades-old murder case that galvanized public outrage over violent
crime in New York was resurrected on Monday, as lawyers for one of the
men convicted at trial say they have unearthed new evidence that proves
their client was not involved in the attack.

The man, Johnny Hincapie, filed a motion in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday asking a judge to throw out his conviction for the 1990 stabbing of Brian Watkins,
a tourist from Utah who died trying to defend his mother from a gang of
muggers on the subway platform at 53rd Street and Seventh Avenue.

Along with the Central Park rape case, the gang attack on the Watkins family, who had visited the city to see the United States Open, came to symbolize rising crime and led to calls for Mayor David N. Dinkins to do more to curb street violence.

“It was one of those terrible crimes that seemed to define New York
City at that time,” Mr. Hincapie’s lawyer, Ron Kuby, said outside the
Criminal Courts Building in Manhattan. “The last victim in the Brian
Watkins case, however, is Johnny Hincapie.”

Mr. Hincapie was
one of seven young men convicted of felony murder in two separate trials
under a state law making everyone who takes part in a mugging
responsible if the victim is killed.

In his motion for a new
trial, Mr. Hincapie says that a detective coerced him into confessing,
physically abusing him and telling him precisely what to say.

His lawyers also have an affidavit from Luis Montero, another man
present in the subway station that night, who said that Mr. Hincapie was
with him near the turnstiles when the attack took place on a subway
platform a floor below them.

“I remember we were both talking
about a couple of girls that were standing a few feet away,” Mr. Montero
said in the affidavit. “We were checking them out, and we made comments
to each other about how they looked.”

Mr. Hincapie has served
23 years in prison and is eligible for parole in two years. All seven
defendants were sentenced to 25 years to life.

The Manhattan
district attorney’s office is reviewing the motion but declined to
comment on its merits, said Erin Duggan, the office’s chief spokeswoman.
Brian Watkins’s mother, Karen, did not respond to a telephone message
from a reporter.

By all accounts, the convicted men were among
about 30 teenagers and young people from Queens who poured off the train
just before 10 p.m. on Sept. 2, 1990, on their way to a dance at the
Roseland Ballroom. Needing money, several hung back and surrounded the
Watkins family as they entered the subway on their way downtown,
according to testimony at the two trials.

“We got to get paid,”
someone was heard to shout. Sherwin Watkins was slashed with a
box-cutter; his wife, Karen, was kicked in the chest and face. When
Brian Watkins tried to protect his mother, Yull Gary Morales, an
18-year-old from Queens, stuck a knife in his chest.

The police
also arrested Mr. Montero after the murder, but the district attorney’s
office dropped charges against him after he had spent a year and a half
in jail. Two witnesses who were in the station confirmed that he was
upstairs on a bench near the turnstiles when the crime occurred,
according to a prosecutor’s document from 1992 recommending the charges
be dismissed.

In addition, another man convicted in the attack,
Anthony Anderson, said in a 2009 affidavit that Mr. Hincapie was not
among the six people he recalled taking part. “Johnny was not part of
the group,” he said.

Mr. Anderson’s jailhouse statement
corroborates what another of the convicted muggers, Ricardo Lopez, told
the police during his interrogation in 1990 — that there were only six
people involved in the attack, and that Mr. Hincapie had left the subway
platform. Mr. Lopez was tried with a second group of three defendants,
and his statement was not introduced during Mr. Hincapie’s earlier
trial.

“Nobody puts Johnny on the platform,” said Robert
Dennison, the former chairman of the New York State parole board. In
recent years, Mr. Dennison has worked along with a journalist, Bill Hughes, to find evidence of Mr. Hincapie’s innocence.

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7) Brooklyn Pantry Struggling to Help Fill Gap Left by Federal Cuts to Food Stamps
By
PATRICK McGEEHAN

In the middle of last week, panic set in at the food pantry in Brooklyn run by the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger.

Staff members there alerted their boss, Melony Samuels, that their
stock of produce and staples was being “wiped out” and at the rate
people were lining up for food, the pantry would be bare before the
weekend. So Dr. Samuels did something she said was a first: She called
in the “cavalry,” pleading for money from donors and deliveries from
sources like the Food Bank for New York City.

Dr. Samuels and other advocates for poor New Yorkers attributed the spike in demand at the city’s hundreds of food pantries
and soup kitchens to a cutback in the federal food stamps program on
Nov. 1. The elimination of $5 billion in stimulus money from the program
will amount to a loss of $29 per month — enough for at least 20
individual meals — for the typical family of three receiving food stamps
in the city, the New York City Coalition Against Hunger estimated.

In its annual report scheduled for release on Tuesday, the coalition
reported that one-sixth of the city’s residents and one-fifth of its
children lived in homes without enough to eat. Those rates of “food
insecurity” have not improved over the past three years, despite the
steady recovery of the city’s economy, said Joel Berg, executive
director of the coalition.

“There is a great disconnect between
the broader economic indicators and the fact that there is absolutely
no recovery in any meaningful way for low-income New Yorkers,” Mr. Berg
said in an interview. “At no time since the Gilded Age has there been a
greater disconnect.”

The most dire change has been in the
Bronx, where more than one-third of residents (36 percent) and nearly
half of the children (49 percent) could not consistently obtain balanced
meals from 2010 through 2012. Those three-year averages were up from
about 29 percent and 37 percent during the three-year period that led up
to the financial crisis — 2006 through 2008 — the study states, based
on data from the United States Census Bureau.

But even in
Brooklyn and Manhattan, two boroughs where real estate prices have risen
to record highs, the number of people without enough money to feed
their families is on the rise, the report shows. That trend was evident
from the line snaking down Fulton Street last week outside the pantry
Dr. Samuels runs.

With Thanksgiving
a week away, about 30 people waited for approval to enter the pantry
and fill sacks with potatoes, onions, milk and rice, and if they were so
fortunate, a chicken or a ham. It was too late to get a turkey. Dr.
Samuels said the pantry had given out more than 1,000 and had no more.

On Thursday, she was relieved that the shelves were not barren.
Overnight, 19 skids of food had arrived from the Food Bank and other
sources she had appealed to, she said. Her call for help was a signal
that raised concern throughout the network of organizations that help
feed the city’s poorer residents.

Carol Schneider, a
spokeswoman for the Food Bank, said that she could not recall Dr.
Samuels ever needing to make such a plea. But she said it was not
surprising given the stress the federal cutback had put on the budgets
of the working poor.

Winsome Stoner knew what Ms. Schneider was
talking about. A married mother of five in the Bedford-Stuyvesant
section of Brooklyn, Ms. Stoner, 39, said the cut to the family’s food
stamps this month amounted to about $50, or about 8 percent.

That brought her to the pantry for a Thanksgiving ham one day — “I got a
nice big one,” she said with a broad smile — and back again last week
for ingredients for the fixings.

But beyond the holiday, when
pantries and soup kitchens are flooded with donations and volunteers,
she did not know how she would make do with less. She said she had
relied on the pantry for produce because it was too expensive at the
Associated supermarket where she spends her food stamps.

“I’m
sort of diabetic, so I’ve got to use vegetables,” Ms. Stoner said. But,
she added with a shrug, “you’ve got to eat what you can afford.”

Mr. Berg said the coalition estimated that demand was up about 10
percent this year at pantries and soup kitchens — before the federal
cutback kicked in. An annual study of them found that nearly half said
they had to turn people away, reduce the amounts they gave out or limit
their hours of operation.

Amria Watson, a single mother of
four, is part of the new demand. Since having a baby three months ago
and having to quit one of her two jobs, she has been a regular at the
Bed-Stuy pantry. Ms. Watson, 35, said she was in constant need of milk,
cereal and juice, and also preferred the fresh produce, some of which
comes from the pantry’s own gardens. “If I ever run out, I come here,”
she said. “The collard greens are so good.”

CAIRO
— The riot police brought a violent end to peaceful protests here on
Tuesday, beating, sexually harassing and detaining some of Egypt’s most
prominent human rights activists in a burst of repression that seemed
likely to broaden opposition to the military-backed government.

The crackdown was the highest-profile police action against non-Islamist protesters since July 3, when the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi, setting off months of bloody civil conflict between Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters and the state.

While the deadly repression of Islamists in recent months has evoked
little sympathy from the public or consternation among officials, the
violence on Tuesday posed a bigger threat to the government, which has
relied on support from non-Islamists.

In scenes that spread on
social media, activists who have played central roles in Egypt’s
post-revolt struggles were manhandled and groped by officers, some in
plain clothes, and shoved into police vans. At least 60 people were
detained, including Mona Seif, an activist who has campaigned against abuses by successive Egyptian leaders, including those in the current government.

As the police tried to justify their response by claiming, without
evidence, that they had reacted to being attacked by protesters,
political leaders worked feverishly to contain public outrage. But by
late Tuesday, at least 13 members of a constitutional drafting committee
had said they were suspending their participation, deepening the
crisis.

The violence came as protesters defied a law announced on Sunday
as part of a widening effort by officials to counter dissent, in
particular the regular protests by Islamists. The law, which allows the
government to ban gatherings of more than 10 people and forbids
demonstrations at places of worship, has drawn widespread condemnation
from human rights groups.

As the protesters gathered in
downtown Cairo on Tuesday, demanding, among other things, an end to
military trials of civilians, the authorities appeared to violate their
own rules regarding proportionate responses to acts of civil
disobedience. They fired a water cannon in a cursory nod to those
regulations, but then quickly set upon the protesters using batons. One
witness said that she had seen the police stripping the clothes off a
photographer and beating several women.

With little outcry, the authorities have killedmorethan
1,000 Islamist protesters since July and jailed thousands of others on
what are widely seen as political charges. In recent weeks, though,
officials have faced rare criticism from non-Islamist activists, as
blame for Egypt’s consuming problems, including abuses by the security
services, has started to shift from Mr. Morsi and the Islamists to the
new rulers.

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

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9) Battling Flames in Forests, With Prison as the Firehouse
By
FERNANDA SANTOS

PRESCOTT, Ariz. — The men cluster in a tight pack, identities
obscured by fire-resistant Nomex clothes, each one anonymous except for
the color of his helmet: red for corrections officers, blue and yellow
for inmates.

When the air was hot and the woods were parched
last summer, the peak of the wildfire season in the West, these trained
wilderness firefighters fought 13 forest fires in Arizona, including the
one in June that half-destroyed the nearby village of Yarnell and killed 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an elite team. On a crisp morning this fall, they were using chain saws and pulaskis
— a firefighting tool that combines an ax and an adz — to chop
overgrown bushes in a private development here, offering a measure of
fire prevention for houses built in the wild.

Their home base is the Arizona State Prison Complex-Lewis,
but when asked where they are from, the reply is simply “Buckeye,” the
name of the town where the prison is located. If there are other
questions, they call it a “gated community” and leave it at that.

“That we’re inmates is the last thing on anybody’s mind,” said John
Chleboun, 33, who has been serving time for burglary at the Lewis
complex and is entering his second year with the crew.

As
federal agencies have cut costs during the budget standoffs in
Washington, further decreasing the size of a firefighting work force
that has already been reduced by 40 percent since the 1980s, the burden
of fighting wildfires has been shifted to states and local
jurisdictions, even as they struggle under the weight of a sluggish
economy. Prison crews, cheap and dependable, have emerged as a solution
as wildfires burn bigger, hotter and longer each year and take up a
growing portion of the United States Forest Service budget. (In 2012
alone, federal agencies spent $1.9 billion on wildfire suppression, just
shy of the record, set in 2006.)

“They’re very cost-effective,” said Julie Hutchinson, a battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection,
which has the nation’s oldest and largest inmate firefighting program:
roughly 4,000 prisoners and 200 crews. “And they’re out in the
community, paying back for their mistakes.”

States log
significant savings, paying inmates a small fraction of the
reimbursement fees paid to federal agencies for using their teams to
fight fires or the price of hiring private companies to do the work the
prisoners do in the off-peak season, like picking up trash along
highways in Nevada, maintaining hiking trails in Colorado, and thinning
forests and removing dried vegetation all across the region.

California pays inmates $1 per hour for work in emergencies like fires
and floods, saving the state an estimated $80 million per year,
according to forestry and fire protection statistics. In Nevada, where
inmates work for the same pay, they bring in around $3.5 million in
annual revenue from the nonfirefighting projects for which they are
hired, said Jody Weintz, who manages the program for the Nevada Division
of Forestry. (Noninmate firefighters earn around $10 an hour, as well
as hazard pay and overtime.)

In Arizona, the pay for inmates is
among the lowest in the country: 50 cents an hour. In Colorado, which
had the nation’s third-highest rate of recidivism in 2010, 52.5 percent,
the program’s supervisor estimated that fewer than 25 percent of the inmates released after working on wilderness firefighting teams returned.

Some firefighting experts, however, do not believe that the social calculus makes much sense.

Wilderness firefighting “is a line of work where there are more people looking for jobs than there are jobs available,” said Stephen J. Pyne,
a professor at the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University
and a former wilderness firefighter who has written numerous books about
the history and mechanics of wildfires. “Why are we turning that over
to prison crews?”

While inmates’ pay is low, there are other
rewards. Arizona inmates work outdoors much of the year, and if they are
out fighting fires, their status as inmates is not easy to discern. In
California, inmates wear orange fire-retardant jumpsuits and sleep in
separate camps when they are out on fire lines. But firefighting inmates
in Arizona wear the same clothes as other wilderness firefighters.

They eat and sleep in the same cafeterias and campsites, an arrangement
that defies the rigid relationship barriers enforced inside prison
walls. They also undergo the same training required of other wilderness
firefighters and pass a physical assessment known as a pack test:
traveling three miles on foot in 45 minutes, carrying 45 pounds on their
backs.

“They’ve got to have the heart, the strength and the
willingness to do the job,” said Jake Guadiana, an Arizona State
Forestry coordinator and the boss of the Lewis crew. “This is not the
place for you if you’re looking for a free meal and some time out of
prison.”

Sometimes the inmates try to take advantage of the
light supervision and escape. Mr. Weintz, in Nevada, said that happened
“once or twice a year,” but as far as he could tell, escapees were
always taken back to prison, though not to the firefighting program. A
clean disciplinary record is one condition of participation. Another is
being in prison for a nonviolent offense.

More commonly,
program managers say, the inmates leave prison at the end of their
sentences and join firefighting crews. One of them, Grant Lovato, 46,
who worked two seasons with the Lewis crew while serving time in prison
for credit card fraud and identity theft, is now a firefighter for the
United States Fish and Wildlife Service in Gulfport, Miss. In a
telephone interview, he said, “The idea that I could be in prison and
still get out into the woods and get to enjoy the nature was a
transformative experience to me.”

The job has strict rules,
like no phone calls or visits while on assignment, and carries many
risks. Five inmates and a correctional officer died in June 1990 in the
Dude Fire, near Payson, Ariz., sparked by a bolt of lightning, just like
the fire in Yarnell. There have been other fatalities and numerous
injuries, but none seem to weigh too heavily on the inmates’ minds. His
helmet tucked under his arm, a mountain peak visible behind him against a
bright blue sky, Armando Gloria, 29, who is serving time for robbery at
the Lewis prison and is on his third season with its firefighting crew,
said, “There’s fear, yes, but when you’re out there, fighting fire, the
fear becomes more like an adrenaline rush.”

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B. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND

ONGOING CAMPAIGNS

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U.S. Court of Appeals Rules Against Lorenzo Johnson’sNew Legal Challenge to His Frame-up Conviction!Demand the PA Attorney General Dismiss the Charges!Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!

The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied Lorenzo Johnson’s
motion to file a Second Habeas Corpus Petition. The order contained the
outrageous declaration that Johnson hadn’t made a “prima facie case”
that he had new evidence of his innocence. This not only puts a legal
obstacle in Johnson’s path as his fight for freedom makes its way
(again) through the state and federal courts—but it undermines the newly
filed Pennsylvania state appeal that is pending in the Court of Common
Pleas.

Stripped of “legalese,” the court’s October 15, 2013
order says Johnson’s new evidence was not brought into court soon
enough—although it was the prosecution and police who withheld evidence
and coerced witnesses into lying or not coming forward with the truth!
This, despite over fifteen years and rounds of legal battles to uncover
the evidence of government misconduct. This is a set-back for Lorenzo
Johnson’s renewed fight for his freedom, but Johnson is even more
determined as his PA state court appeal continues.

Increased
public support and protest is needed. The fight for Lorenzo Johnson’s
freedom is not only a fight for this courageous man and family. The
fight for Lorenzo Johnson is also a fight for all the innocent others
who have been framed and are sitting in the slow death of prison. The PA
Attorney General is directly pursuing the charges against Lorenzo,
despite the evidence of his innocence and the corruption of the police.
Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!

—Rachel Wolkenstein, Esq.
October 25, 2013

For more on the federal court and PA state court legal filings.
Hear Mumia’s latest commentary, “Cat Cries”
Go to: www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org for more information, to sign the petition, and how to help.

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PUSH CHELSEA'S JAILERS TO RESPECT HER IDENTITY

Call and write Ft Leavenworth today and tell them to honor Manning's wishes around her name and gender:

Chelsea's supporters were awarded the title “absolutely fabulous overall contingent” at the San Francisco Pride Parade

Call:
(913) 758-3600

Private
Manning has been an icon both for the government transparency movement
and LGBTQ activists because of her fearlessness and acts of conscience.
Now, as she begins serving her sentence, Chelsea has asked for help with
legal appeals, family visits, education, and support for undergoing
gender transition. The latter is a decision she’s made following years
of experiencing gender dysphoria and examining her options. At a
difficult time in her life, she joined the military out of hope–the hope
that she could use her service to save lives, and also the hope that it
would help to suppress her feelings of gender dysphoria. But after
serving time in Iraq, Private Manning realized what mattered to her most
was the truth, personal as well as political, even when it proved
challenging.

Now she wants the Fort Leavenworth
military prison to allow her access to hormone replacement therapy which
she has offered to pay for herself, as she pursues the process to have
her name legally changed to ‘Chelsea Elizabeth Manning.’

To
encourage the prison to honor her transgender identity, we’re calling
on progressive supporters and allies to contact Fort Leavenworth
officials demanding they acknowledge her requested name change
immediately. Currently, prison officials are not required to respect
Chelsea’s identity, and can even refuse to deliver mail addressed to the
name ‘Chelsea Manning.’ However, it’s within prison administrators’
power to begin using the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ now, in advance of the
legal name change which will most likely be approved sometime next year.
It’s also up to these officials to approve Private Manning’s request
for hormone therapy.

Call:
(913) 758-3600

Tell
them: “Transgender rights are human rights! Respect Private Manning’s
identity by acknowledging the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ whenever possible,
including in mail addressed to her, and by allowing her access to
appropriate medical treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone
replacement therapy (HRT).”

While openly transgender
individuals are allowed to serve in many other militaries around the
world, the US military continues to deny their existence. Now, by
speaking up for Chelsea’s right to treatment, you can support one brave
whistleblower in her personal struggle, and help set an important
benchmark for the rights of transgender individuals everywhere.
(Remember that letters written with focus and a respectful tone are more
likely to be effective.) Feel free to copy this sample letter.

Earlier
this year, the Private Manning Support Network won the title of most
“absolutely fabulous overall contingent” at the San Francisco Pride
Parade, the largest celebration of its kind for LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay
Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning) people nationwide. Over one
thousand people marched for Private Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning
in that parade, to show LGBTQ community pride for the Iraq War’s most
well-known whistleblower.

Help us continue to cover 100% of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.

Free Lynne Stewart: Support Compassionate Release

Renowned defense
attorney Lynne Stewart, unjustly charged and convicted for the “crime”
of providing her client with a fearless defense, is dying of cancer
while imprisoned in the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, Texas.

Your action now can lead to her freedom so that she
may live out her remaining days with the comfort and joy of her family
and those closest to her, including her devoted husband Ralph Poynter,
many children, grandchildren, a great grandchild and lifelong friends.

The conservative medical prognosis by the
oncologist contracted by the prison is that Lynne Stewart has but
16-months to live. Breast cancer, in remission prior to her
imprisonment, reached Stage Four more than a year ago, emerging in her
lymph nodes, shoulder, bones and lungs.

Despite repeated courses of chemotherapy, cancer
advances in her lungs, resistant to treatment. Compounding her dire
condition, Lynne Stewart’s white blood cell count dropped so low that
she has been isolated in a prison hospital room since April 2013 to
reduce risk of generalized infection.

Under the 1984 Sentencing Act, upon a prisoner’s
request, the Bureau of Prisons can file a motion with the Court to
reduce sentences “for extraordinary and compelling reasons,” life
threatening illness foremost among these.

Lynne Stewart’s recent re-application for
compassionate release meets all the criteria specified in guidelines
issued by the Bureau of Prisons in August 2013.

These “new guidelines” followed a searing report
and testimony before Congress by the Department of Justice’s Inspector
General Michael Horowitz. His findings corroborated a definitive report
by Human Rights Watch. Inspector General Horowitz excoriated the Federal
Bureau of Prisons for the restrictive crippling of the compassionate
release program. In a 20-year period, the Bureau had released a scant
492 persons – an average of 24 a year out of a population that exceeds
220,000.

Over 30,000 people of conscience from all walks of
life in the United States and internationally took action to free Lynne
Stewart following her first application for compassionate release in
April of this year.

Among those who raised their voices are former
Attorney General Ramsey Clark – who was co-counsel in the case that led
to Lynne Stewart’s imprisonment, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former
President of the United Nations General Assembly, Father Miguel D’Escoto
Brockmann, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Ed Asner,
Daniel Berrigan, Liz McAllister Berrigan, Richard Falk, Daniel Ellsberg,
Noam Chomsky, Cornell West, Dick Gregory, Alice Walker and Bianca
Jagger.

They along with thousands of individuals and
organizations, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, the
National Lawyers Guild and Lawyers Rights Watch Canada, directed
letters, phone calls and public declarations to the Federal Bureau of
Prisons Director Charles E. Samuels, Jr. and to Attorney General Eric H.
Holder, Jr.

Dick Gregory has refused all solid food since April
4 and his remarkable moral witness will not end until Lynne Stewart is
released.

We call upon all to amplify this outpouring of
support. We ask all within our reach to convey to Bureau of Prisons
Director Samuels his obligation to approve Lynne Stewart’s application
and instruct the federal attorney to file the requisite motion for Lynne
Stewart’s compassionate release.

Please sign this new petition and
reach out to others to sign. The letter below will be sent on your
behalf via email to Charles E. Samuels, Jr., Director of the Federal
Bureau of Prisons and to Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. Telephone
calls also can be made to the Bureau of Prisons:

By James Branum and Courage to Resist. November 4, 2013
Fort Carson, Colorado – Imprisoned war resister PFC Kimberly Rivera
has submitted a clemency application seeking a reduction by 45 days in
the 10 month prison sentence she received for seeking asylum in Canada
rather return to her unit in Iraq.

The request for clemency was
based on humanitarian reasons due to pregnancy. Unless clemency is
granted, Private First Class Kimberly Rivera will be forced to give
birth in prison and then immediately relinquish custody of her son while
she continues to serve the remainder of her sentence.

Unfortunately military regulations provide no provisions for her to be able to breastfeed her infant son while she is in prison.
Fort Carson Senior Commander Brigadier General Michael A. Bills will
be making a decision on PFC Rivera’s clemency request in the coming
weeks.
PFC Rivera’s case made international news when she was the first
female US soldier in the current era to flee to Canada for reasons of
conscience. After a protracted struggle through the Canadian legal
system, she was deported back to the United States in September 2012.
She was then immediately arrested and sent back to the Army to stand
trial.In an interview with Courage to Resist on the eve of her court-martial,
Rivera said, “When I saw the little girl [in Iraq] shaking in fear, in
fear of me, because of my uniform, I couldn’t fathom what she had been
through and all I saw was my little girl and I just wanted to hold her
and comfort her. But I knew I couldn’t. It broke my heart. I am against
hurting anyone… I would harm myself first. I felt this also made me a
liability to my unit and I could not let me be a reason for anyone to be
harmed—so I left... Even though I did not fill out the official
application to obtain conscientious objector status, I consider myself a
conscientious objector to all war.”
On April 29, 2013, PFC Rivera pled to charges of desertion. She was
sentenced by the military judge to fourteen months in prison, loss of
rank and pay, and a dishonorable discharge; thanks to a pre-trial
agreement her sentence was reduced to an actual sentence to ten months
of confinement and a bad-conduct discharge.Kimberly Rivera has been recognized by Amnesty International as a “prisoner of conscience.” She is the mother of four children, ages 11, 9, 4 and 2.
Kimberly Rivera’s request for clemency was accompanied by 495 letters
of support, written by family members, friends, as well as members of
Amnesty International from 19 countries.
“We have many organizations to thank for the outpouring of support
for Kimberly Rivera, including Amnesty International, Courage to Resist,
the War Resisters Support Campaign of Canada, Veterans for Peace and
Coffee Strong,” said James M. Branum, civilian defense attorney for PFC
Rivera. “We also want to recognize the tireless efforts of local
supporters in Colorado Springs and San Diego who have taken the time to
visit Kim in prison as well as to provide important support to Kim’s
family in her absence.”
While the official clemency request is now complete, supporters of
PFC Rivera are still encouraged to continue to speak out on her behalf.
Letters in support of PFC Rivera’s clemency request can be sent directly
to:

Photos: Top-Kimberly with husband Mario
during her court martial. Middle-Kimberly in Canada prior to being
deported. Bottom-Courage to Resist rallies outside Canadian Consulate,
San Francisco CA, prior to Kimberly's forced return.

Initial press release
by The Center for Conscience in Action, an Oklahoma City-based
organization dedicated to the intersection of peace, conscience and
direct action. CCA’s Legal Support Project provides low and no cost
legal representation to military service members seeking discharge on
the grounds of conscience.For more information or to schedule an interview about this
subject, please contact James M. Branum, lead defense counsel for PFC
Rivera, at 405-494-0562 or girightslawyer(at)gmail(dot)com. Consolidated
Brig Miramar generally forbids inmates from doing interviews with the
press, but you are welcome to see if an exception can be made by
contacting the Brig Public Affairs office at 858-577-7071.Additional case updates will be posted at couragetoresist.org and freekimberlyrivera.org.

DOE CAMPAIGN
We are working to ensure that the ACCJC’s authority is not renewed by
the Department of Education this December when they are up for their
5-year renewal. Our campaign made it possible for over 50 Third Party
Comments to be sent to the DOE re: the ACCJC. Our next step in this
campaign is to send a delegation from CCSF to Washington, D.C. to give
oral comments at the hearing on December 12th. We expect to have an
array of forces aligned on the other side who have much more money and
resources than we do.So please support this effort to get ACCJC authority revoked!

LEGAL CAMPAIGN
Save CCSF members have been meeting with Attorney Dan Siegel since last
May to explore legal avenues to fight the ACCJC. After much
consideration, and consultation with AFT 2121’s attorney as well as the
SF City Attorney’s office, Dan has come up with a legal strategy that is
complimentary to what is already being pursued. In fact, AFT 2121’s
attorney is encouraging us to go forward.
The total costs of pursuing this (depositions, etc.) will be
substantially more than $15,000. However, Dan is willing to do it for a
fixed fee of $15,000. He will not expect a retainer, i.e. payment in
advance, but we should start payments ASAP. If we win the ACCJC will
have to pay our costs.

PLEASE HELP BOTH OF THESE IMPORTANT EFFORTS!
Checks can be made out to Save CCSF Coalition with “legal” in the memo line and sent to:

16 Years in Solitary Confinement Is Like a "Living Tomb"
American Civil Liberties Union petition to end long-term solitary confinement:
California
Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard: We stand with the prisoners on
hunger strike. We urge you to comply with the US Commission on Safety
and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 recommendations regarding an end to
long-term solitary confinement.
Sign the petition:
https://www.aclu.org/secure/ca-hunger-strike?emsrc=Nat_Appeal_AutologinEnabled&emissue=criminal_justice&emtype=petition&ms=eml_130719_acluaction_cahungerstrike&af=k%2FxKX1cIRdoonPVmvnAfAit8jzOCulLOnCX4AAFljff%2B%2BVOdOHNe6CKwl7glWQSjSakzXt53zF%2FodPf00T3rRHlglO3tjEA6DcMSLJRlTbfVBHAizX6uOxoSy5%2FbP93EBFj5xi6Lwm3RWHjmDOZDARHLBSl1rqTr07kLhONZrnU1UIIgPs0P%2FXQ%2BJL3reyE8%2BoiI1nlfPZPBVhbfYxUzMQ%3D%3D&etname=130719+CA+prisoners+hunger+strike&etjid=946739
In
California, hundreds of prisoners have been held in solitary for more
than a decade – some for infractions as trivial as reading Machiavelli's
"The Prince."

Gabriel Reyes describes the pain of being isolated for at least 22 hours a day for the last 16 years:

“Unless
you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by
yourself, between four cold walls, with little concept of time…. It is a
living tomb …’ I have not been allowed physical contact with any of my
loved ones since 1995…I feel helpless and hopeless. In short, I am being
psychologically tortured.”

That’s why over 30,000
prisoners in California began a hunger strike – the biggest the state
has ever seen. They’re refusing food to protest prisoners being held for
decades in solitary and to push for other changes to improve their
basic conditions.

California Corrections Secretary
Jeffrey Beard has tried to dismiss the strikers and refuses to
negotiate, but the media pressure is building through the strike. If
tens of thousands of us take action, we can help keep this issue in the
spotlight so that Secretary Beard can’t ignore the inhumane treatment of
prisoners.

Sign the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term solitary confinement.

Solitary
is such an extreme form of punishment that a United Nations torture
rapporteur called for an international ban on the practice except in
rare occasions. Here’s why:

The majority of the 80,000
people held in solitary in this country are severely mentally ill or
because of a minor infraction (it’s a myth that it’s only for violent
prisoners)
Even for people with stable mental health, solitary
causes severe psychological reactions, often leading people to attempt
suicide
It jeopardizes public safety because prisoners held in solitary have a harder time reintegrating into society.

And
to add insult to injury, the hunger strikers are now facing retaliation
– their lawyers are being restricted from visiting and the strikers are
being punished. But the media continues to write about the hunger
strike and we can help keep the pressure on Secretary Beard by signing
this petition.

Sign the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term solitary confinement.

Our
criminal justice system should keep communities safe and treat people
fairly. The use of solitary confinement undermines both of these goals –
but little by little, we can help put a stop to such cruelty.

Thank you,
Anthony for the ACLU Action team
P.S.
The hunger strikers have developed five core demands to address their
basic conditions, the main one being an end to long-term solitary
confinement. They are:

The
statement was read by Pfc. Bradley Manning at a providence inquiry for
his formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine
specifications for lesser included offenses. He pled not guilty to 12
other specifications. This rush transcript was taken by journalist Alexa
O'Brien at Thursday's pretrial hearing and first appeared on Salon.com.

You Have the Right to Remain Silent: NLG Guide to Law Enforcement Encounters

Posted 1 day ago on July 27, 2012, 10:28 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Occupy
Wall Street is a nonviolent movement for social and economic justice,
but in recent days disturbing reports have emerged of Occupy-affiliated
activists being targeted by US law enforcement, including agents from
the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. To help ensure Occupiers
and allied activists know their rights when encountering law
enforcement, we are publishing in full the National Lawyers Guild's
booklet: You Have the Right to Remain Silent. The NLG provides
invaluable support to the Occupy movement and other activists – please
click here to support the NLG.

We strongly encourage
all Occupiers to read and share the information provided below. We also
recommend you enter the NLG's national hotline number (888-654-3265)
into your cellphone (if you have one) and keep a copy handy. This
information is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact the
NLG or a criminal defense attorney immediately if you have been visited
by the FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should also alert
your relatives, friends, co-workers and others so that they will be
prepared if they are contacted as well.

You Have the Right to Remain Silent: A Know Your Rights Guide for Law Enforcement Encounters

What Rights Do I Have?

Whether
or not you're a citizen, you have rights under the United States
Constitution. The Fifth Amendment gives every person the right to remain
silent: not to answer questions asked by a police officer or government
agent. The Fourth Amendment restricts the government's power to enter
and search your home or workplace, although there are many exceptions
and new laws have expanded the government's power to conduct
surveillance. The First Amendment protects your right to speak freely
and to advocate for social change. However, if you are a non-citizen,
the Department of Homeland Security may target you based on your
political activities.

Standing Up For Free Speech

The
government's crusade against politically-active individuals is intended
to disrupt and suppress the exercise of time-honored free speech
activities, such as boycotts, protests, grassroots organizing and
solidarity work. Remember that you have the right to stand up to the
intimidation tactics of FBI agents and other law enforcement officials
who, with political motives, are targeting organizing and free speech
activities. Informed resistance to these tactics and steadfast defense
of your and others' rights can bring positive results. Each person who
takes a courageous stand makes future resistance to government
oppression easier for all. The National Lawyers Guild has a long
tradition of standing up to government repression. The organization
itself was labeled a "subversive" group during the McCarthy Era and was
subject to FBI surveillance and infiltration for many years. Guild
attorneys have defended FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party,
the American Indian Movement, and the Puerto Rican independence
movement. The NLG exposed FBI surveillance, infiltration and disruption
tactics that were detailed during the 1975-76 COINTELPRO hearings. In
1989 the NLG prevailed in a lawsuit on behalf of several activist
organizations, including the Guild, that forced the FBI to expose the
extent to which it had been spying on activist movements. Under the
settlement, the FBI turned over roughly 400,000 pages of its files on
the Guild, which are now available at the Tamiment Library at New York
University.

What if FBI Agents or Police Contact Me?

What if an agent or police officer comes to the door?

Do
not invite the agents or police into your home. Do not answer any
questions. Tell the agent that you do not wish to talk with him or her.
You can state that your lawyer will contact them on your behalf. You can
do this by stepping outside and pulling the door behind you so that the
interior of your home or office is not visible, getting their contact
information or business cards and then returning inside. They should
cease questioning after this. If the agent or officer gives a reason for
contacting you, take notes and give the information to your attorney.
Anything you say, no matter how seemingly harmless or insignificant, may
be used against you or others in the future. Lying to or misleading a
federal agent is a crime. The more you speak, the more opportunity for
federal law enforcement to find something you said (even if not
intentionally) false and assert that you lied to a federal officer.

Do I have to answer questions?

You
have the constitutional right to remain silent. It is not a crime to
refuse to answer questions. You do not have to talk to anyone, even if
you have been arrested or are in jail. You should affirmatively and
unambiguously state that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to
consult an attorney. Once you make the request to speak to a lawyer, do
not say anything else. The Supreme Court recently ruled that answering
law enforcement questions may be taken as a waiver of your right to
remain silent, so it is important that you assert your rights and
maintain them. Only a judge can order you to answer questions. There is
one exception: some states have "stop and identify" statutes which
require you to provide identity information or your name if you have
been detained on reasonable suspicion that you may have committed a
crime. A lawyer in your state can advise you of the status of these
requirements where you reside.

Do I have to give my name?

As
above, in some states you can be detained or arrested for merely
refusing to give your name. And in any state, police do not always
follow the law, and refusing to give your name may make them suspicious
or more hostile and lead to your arrest, even without just cause, so use
your judgment. Giving a false name could in some circumstances be a
crime.

Do I need a lawyer?

You have
the right to talk to a lawyer before you decide whether to answer
questions from law enforcement. It is a good idea to talk to a lawyer if
you are considering answering any questions. You have the right to have
a lawyer present during any interview. The lawyer's job is to protect
your rights. Once you tell the agent that you want to talk to a lawyer,
he or she should stop trying to question you and should make any further
contact through your lawyer. If you do not have a lawyer, you can still
tell the officer you want to speak to one before answering questions.
Remember to get the name, agency and telephone number of any
investigator who visits you, and give that information to your lawyer.
The government does not have to provide you with a free lawyer unless
you are charged with a crime, but the NLG or another organization may be
able to help you find a lawyer for free or at a reduced rate.

If I refuse to answer questions or say I want a lawyer, won't it seem like I have something to hide?

Anything
you say to law enforcement can be used against you and others. You can
never tell how a seemingly harmless bit of information might be used or
manipulated to hurt you or someone else. That is why the right not to
talk is a fundamental right under the Constitution. Keep in mind that
although law enforcement agents are allowed to lie to you, lying to a
government agent is a crime. Remaining silent is not. The safest things
to say are "I am going to remain silent," "I want to speak to my
lawyer," and "I do not consent to a search." It is a common practice for
law enforcement agents to try to get you to waive your rights by
telling you that if you have nothing to hide you would talk or that
talking would "just clear things up." The fact is, if they are
questioning you, they are looking to incriminate you or someone you may
know, or they are engaged in political intelligence gathering. You
should feel comfortable standing firm in protection and defense of your
rights and refusing to answer questions.

Can agents search my home or office?

You
do not have to let police or agents into your home or office unless
they have and produce a valid search warrant. A search warrant is a
written court order that allows the police to conduct a specified
search. Interfering with a warrantless search probably will not stop it
and you might get arrested. But you should say "I do not consent to a
search," and call a criminal defense lawyer or the NLG. You should be
aware that a roommate or guest can legally consent to a search of your
house if the police believe that person has the authority to give
consent, and your employer can consent to a search of your workspace
without your permission.

What if agents have a search warrant?

If
you are present when agents come for the search, you can ask to see the
warrant. The warrant must specify in detail the places to be searched
and the people or things to be taken away. Tell the agents you do not
consent to the search so that they cannot go beyond what the warrant
authorizes. Ask if you are allowed to watch the search; if you are
allowed to, you should. Take notes, including names, badge numbers, what
agency each officer is from, where they searched and what they took. If
others are present, have them act as witnesses to watch carefully what
is happening. If the agents ask you to give them documents, your
computer, or anything else, look to see if the item is listed in the
warrant. If it is not, do not consent to them taking it without talking
to a lawyer. You do not have to answer questions. Talk to a lawyer
first. (Note: If agents present an arrest warrant, they may only perform
a cursory visual search of the premises to see if the person named in
the arrest warrant is present.)

Do I have to answer questions if I have been arrested?

No.
If you are arrested, you do not have to answer any questions. You
should affirmatively and unambiguously state that you wish to assert
your right to remain silent. Ask for a lawyer right away. Do not say
anything else. Repeat to every officer who tries to talk to or question
you that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a
lawyer. You should always talk to a lawyer before you decide to answer
any questions.

What if I speak to government agents anyway?

Even
if you have already answered some questions, you can refuse to answer
other questions until you have a lawyer. If you find yourself talking,
stop. Assert that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak
to a lawyer.

What if the police stop me on the street?

Ask
if you are free to go. If the answer is yes, consider just walking
away. If the police say you are not under arrest, but are not free to
go, then you are being detained. The police can pat down the outside of
your clothing if they have reason to suspect you might be armed and
dangerous. If they search any more than this, say clearly, "I do not
consent to a search." They may keep searching anyway. If this happens,
do not resist because you can be charged with assault or resisting
arrest. You do not have to answer any questions. You do not have to open
bags or any closed container. Tell the officers you do not consent to a
search of your bags or other property.

What if police or agents stop me in my car?

Keep
your hands where the police can see them. If you are driving a vehicle,
you must show your license, registration and, in some states, proof of
insurance. You do not have to consent to a search. But the police may
have legal grounds to search your car anyway. Clearly state that you do
not consent. Officers may separate passengers and drivers from each
other to question them, but no one has to answer any questions.

What if I am treated badly by the police or the FBI?

Write
down the officer's badge number, name or other identifying information.
You have a right to ask the officer for this information. Try to find
witnesses and their names and phone numbers. If you are injured, seek
medical attention and take pictures of the injuries as soon as you can.
Call a lawyer as soon as possible.

What if the police or FBI threaten me with a grand jury subpoena if I don't answer their questions?

A
grand jury subpoena is a written order for you to go to court and
testify about information you may have. It is common for the FBI to
threaten you with a subpoena to get you to talk to them. If they are
going to subpoena you, they will do so anyway. You should not volunteer
to speak just because you are threatened with a subpoena. You should
consult a lawyer.

What if I receive a grand jury subpoena?

Grand
jury proceedings are not the same as testifying at an open court trial.
You are not allowed to have a lawyer present (although one may wait in
the hallway and you may ask to consult with him or her after each
question) and you may be asked to answer questions about your activities
and associations. Because of the witness's limited rights in this
situation, the government has frequently used grand jury subpoenas to
gather information about activists and political organizations. It is
common for the FBI to threaten activists with a subpoena in order to
elicit information about their political views and activities and those
of their associates. There are legal grounds for stopping ("quashing")
subpoenas, and receiving one does not necessarily mean that you are
suspected of a crime. If you do receive a subpoena, call the NLG
National Hotline at 888-NLG-ECOL (888-654-3265) or call a criminal
defense attorney immediately.

The government regularly
uses grand jury subpoena power to investigate and seek evidence related
to politically-active individuals and social movements. This practice is
aimed at prosecuting activists and, through intimidation and
disruption, discouraging continued activism.

Federal
grand jury subpoenas are served in person. If you receive one, it is
critically important that you retain the services of an attorney,
preferably one who understands your goals and, if applicable,
understands the nature of your political work, and has experience with
these issues. Most lawyers are trained to provide the best legal defense
for their client, often at the expense of others. Beware lawyers who
summarily advise you to cooperate with grand juries, testify against
friends, or cut off contact with your friends and political activists.
Cooperation usually leads to others being subpoenaed and investigated.
You also run the risk of being charged with perjury, a felony, should
you omit any pertinent information or should there be inconsistencies in
your testimony.

Frequently prosecutors will offer "use
immunity," meaning that the prosecutor is prohibited from using your
testimony or any leads from it to bring charges against you. If a
subsequent prosecution is brought, the prosecutor bears the burden of
proving that all of its evidence was obtained independent of the
immunized testimony. You should be aware, however, that they will use
anything you say to manipulate associates into sharing more information
about you by suggesting that you have betrayed confidences.

In
front of a grand jury you can "take the Fifth" (exercise your right to
remain silent). However, the prosecutor may impose immunity on you,
which strips you of Fifth Amendment protection and subjects you to the
possibility of being cited for contempt and jailed if you refuse to
answer further. In front of a grand jury you have no Sixth Amendment
right to counsel, although you can consult with a lawyer outside the
grand jury room after each question.

What if I don't cooperate with the grand jury?

If
you receive a grand jury subpoena and elect to not cooperate, you may
be held in civil contempt. There is a chance that you may be jailed or
imprisoned for the length of the grand jury in an effort to coerce you
to cooperate. Regular grand juries sit for a basic term of 18 months,
which can be extended up to a total of 24 months. It is lawful to hold
you in order to coerce your cooperation, but unlawful to hold you as a
means of punishment. In rare instances you may face criminal contempt
charges.

What If I Am Not a Citizen and the DHS Contacts Me?

The
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is now part of the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and has been renamed and
reorganized into: 1. The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services
(BCIS); 2. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP); and 3. The
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). All three bureaus
will be referred to as DHS for the purposes of this pamphlet.

?
Assert your rights. If you do not demand your rights or if you sign
papers waiving your rights, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
may deport you before you see a lawyer or an immigration judge. Never
sign anything without reading, understanding and knowing the
consequences of signing it.

? Talk to a lawyer. If
possible, carry with you the name and telephone number of an immigration
lawyer who will take your calls. The immigration laws are hard to
understand and there have been many recent changes. DHS will not explain
your options to you. As soon as you encounter a DHS agent, call your
attorney. If you can't do it right away, keep trying. Always talk to an
immigration lawyer before leaving the U.S. Even some legal permanent
residents can be barred from returning.

Based on
today's laws, regulations and DHS guidelines, non-citizens usually have
the following rights, no matter what their immigration status. This
information may change, so it is important to contact a lawyer. The
following rights apply to non-citizens who are inside the U.S.
Non-citizens at the border who are trying to enter the U.S. do not have
all the same rights.

Do I have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any DHS questions or signing any DHS papers?

Yes.
You have the right to call a lawyer or your family if you are detained,
and you have the right to be visited by a lawyer in detention. You have
the right to have your attorney with you at any hearing before an
immigration judge. You do not have the right to a government-appointed
attorney for immigration proceedings, but if you have been arrested,
immigration officials must show you a list of free or low cost legal
service providers.

Should I carry my green card or other immigration papers with me?

If
you have documents authorizing you to stay in the U.S., you must carry
them with you. Presenting false or expired papers to DHS may lead to
deportation or criminal prosecution. An unexpired green card, I-94,
Employment Authorization Card, Border Crossing Card or other papers that
prove you are in legal status will satisfy this requirement. If you do
not carry these papers with you, you could be charged with a crime.
Always keep a copy of your immigration papers with a trusted family
member or friend who can fax them to you, if need be. Check with your
immigration lawyer about your specific case.

Am I required to talk to government officers about my immigration history?

If
you are undocumented, out of status, a legal permanent resident (green
card holder), or a citizen, you do not have to answer any questions
about your immigration history. (You may want to consider giving your
name; see above for more information about this.) If you are not in any
of these categories, and you are being questioned by a DHS or FBI agent,
then you may create problems with your immigration status if you refuse
to provide information requested by the agent. If you have a lawyer,
you can tell the agent that your lawyer will answer questions on your
behalf. If answering questions could lead the agent to information that
connects you with criminal activity, you should consider refusing to
talk to the agent at all.

If I am arrested for
immigration violations, do I have the right to a hearing before an
immigration judge to defend myself against deportation charges?

Yes.
In most cases only an immigration judge can order you deported. But if
you waive your rights or take "voluntary departure," agreeing to leave
the country, you could be deported without a hearing. If you have
criminal convictions, were arrested at the border, came to the U.S.
through the visa waiver program or have been ordered deported in the
past, you could be deported without a hearing. Contact a lawyer
immediately to see if there is any relief for you.

Can I call my consulate if I am arrested?

Yes.
Non-citizens arrested in the U.S. have the right to call their
consulate or to have the police tell the consulate of your arrest. The
police must let your consulate visit or speak with you if consular
officials decide to do so. Your consulate might help you find a lawyer
or offer other help. You also have the right to refuse help from your
consulate.

What happens if I give up my right to a hearing or leave the U.S. before the hearing is over?

You
could lose your eligibility for certain immigration benefits, and you
could be barred from returning to the U.S. for a number of years. You
should always talk to an immigration lawyer before you decide to give up
your right to a hearing.

What should I do if I want to contact DHS?

Always
talk to a lawyer before contacting DHS, even on the phone. Many DHS
officers view "enforcement" as their primary job and will not explain
all of your options to you.

What Are My Rights at Airports?

IMPORTANT
NOTE: It is illegal for law enforcement to perform any stops, searches,
detentions or removals based solely on your race, national origin,
religion, sex or ethnicity.

If I am entering the U.S. with valid travel papers can a U.S. customs agent stop and search me?

Yes. Customs agents have the right to stop, detain and search every person and item.

Can
my bags or I be searched after going through metal detectors with no
problem or after security sees that my bags do not contain a weapon?

Yes.
Even if the initial screen of your bags reveals nothing suspicious, the
screeners have the authority to conduct a further search of you or your
bags.

If I am on an airplane, can an airline employee interrogate me or ask me to get off the plane?

The
pilot of an airplane has the right to refuse to fly a passenger if he
or she believes the passenger is a threat to the safety of the flight.
The pilot's decision must be reasonable and based on observations of
you, not stereotypes.

What If I Am Under 18?

Do I have to answer questions?

No.
Minors too have the right to remain silent. You cannot be arrested for
refusing to talk to the police, probation officers, or school officials,
except in some states you may have to give your name if you have been
detained.

What if I am detained?

If
you are detained at a community detention facility or Juvenile Hall, you
normally must be released to a parent or guardian. If charges are filed
against you, in most states you are entitled to counsel (just like an
adult) at no cost.

Do I have the right to express political views at school?

Public
school students generally have a First Amendment right to politically
organize at school by passing out leaflets, holding meetings, etc., as
long as those activities are not disruptive and do not violate
legitimate school rules. You may not be singled out based on your
politics, ethnicity or religion.

Can my backpack or locker be searched?

School
officials can search students' backpacks and lockers without a warrant
if they reasonably suspect that you are involved in criminal activity or
carrying drugs or weapons. Do not consent to the police or school
officials searching your property, but do not physically resist or you
may face criminal charges.

Disclaimer

This
booklet is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact an
attorney if you have been visited by the FBI or other law enforcement
officials. You should also alert your relatives, friends, co-workers and
others so that they will be prepared if they are contacted as well.

On Gun Control, Martin Luther King, the Deacons of Defense and the history of Black Liberation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzYKisvBN1o&feature=player_embedded

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Fukushima Never Again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU-Z4VLDGxU

"Fukushima,
Never Again" tells the story of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns
in north east Japan in March of 2011 and exposes the cover-up by Tepco
and the Japanese government.

This is the first film
that interviews the Mothers Of Fukushima, nuclear power experts and
trade unionists who are fighting for justice and the protection of the
children and the people of Japan and the world. The residents and
citizens were forced to buy their own geiger counters and radiation
dosimeters in order to test their communities to find out if they were
in danger.

The government said contaminated soil in children's school grounds was safe and then

when
the people found out it was contaminated and removed the top soil, the
government and TEPCO refused to remove it from the school grounds.

It
also relays how the nuclear energy program for "peaceful atoms" was
brought to Japan under the auspices of the US military occupation and
also the criminal cover-up of the safety dangers of the plant by TEPCO
and GE management which built the plant in Fukushima. It also interviews
Kei Sugaoka, the GE nulcear plant inspector from the bay area who
exposed cover-ups in the safety at the Fukushima plant and was
retaliated against by GE. This documentary allows the voices of the
people and workers to speak out about the reality of the disaster and
what this means not only for the people of Japan but the people of the
world as the US government and nuclear industry continue to push for
more new plants and government subsidies. This film breaks

the information blockade story line of the corporate media in Japan, the US and around the world that Fukushima is over.

Production Of Labor Video Project

P.O. Box 720027

San Francisco, CA 94172

www.laborvideo.org

lvpsf@laborvideo.org

For information on obtaining the video go to:

www.fukushimaneveragain.com

(415)282-1908

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1000 year of war through the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiG8neU4_bs&feature=share

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Anatomy of a Massacre - Afganistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6BnRc11aug&feature=player_embedded

Afghans accuse multiple soldiers of pre-meditated murder

To see more go to http://www.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures

Follow us on Facebook (http://goo.gl/YRw42) or Twitter

(http://www.twitter.com/journeymanvod)

The recent massacre of 17 civilians by a rogue US soldier has been shrouded in

mystery. But through unprecedented access to those involved, this report

confronts the accusations that Bales didn't act alone.

"They came into my room and they killed my family". Stories like this are common

amongst the survivors in Aklozai and Najiban. As are the shocking accusations

that Sergeant Bales was not acting alone. Even President Karzai has announced

"one man can not do that". Chief investigator, General Karimi, is suspicious

that despite being fully armed, Bales freely left his base without raising

alarm. "How come he leaves at night and nobody is aware? Every time we have

weapon accountability and personal accountability." These are just a few of the

questions the American army and government are yet to answer. One thing however

is very clear, the massacre has unleashed a wave of grief and outrage which

means relations in Kandahar will be tense for years to come: "If I could lay my

hands on those infidels, I would rip them apart with my bare hands."

A Film By SBS

Distributed By Journeyman Pictures

April 2012

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Photo of George Zimmerman, in 2005 photo, left, and in a more recent photo.